Death and the Devil?

Yesterday's post got a little deep, so today I am going to share my thoughts on some "scary" cards - the ones that people get nervous about when they come up in a reading. The cards with the greatest fear factor are by far Death and The Devil, although there are others that make people uneasy on sight - but let's stay focused on these two.

Death - Death does not really mean "Death," although depending on the surrounding cards a physical death is one potential meaning. Death means "change," and when you think of change, someone dying isn't really the first thing that comes to mind, is it? The Death card is about the death of old habits, old patterns, old ways of doing things, perhaps the end of a friendship or relationship, but the Death card indicates that you will be moving on - and often, you will be moving on up! When you see this card, it is a good sign, so you can relax.

The Devil - Lordy, lordy, I have had people refuse to even touch the deck because the "Devil" was depicted in it. These tend to be the same people who refuse to make deviled eggs until someone suggests they can call them "glory eggs" and be done with it (Actually, I could seriously go for some "glory eggs" right now). Nevertheless, any religion that incorporates Tarot, which is going to be some form of Pagan religion - does NOT even recognize the Devil as real. In fact, when referring to the idea of the Devil they will speak of "The Christian Devil" because the Devil really only exists for Christians.

During the rise of Christianity, the Cathilic Church had to deal with the traditional Pagan religions of the people they were converting. Local fertility goddesses became different incarnations of the Virgin Mary, but the fertility god, or "horned god," represented almost universally as a Pan type half goat/half man, was problematic. There was no suitable way for him to be incorporated, so he was quite literally demonized. His image became attributed to Satan, so that any further worship of such a god would be entirely out of the question, not to mention punishable by death. Pagans are painfully aware of this history, and recognize the Christian Devil as a perversion of a Pagan god, and the image of a horned beast as the "Devil" to be completely an invention of the Catholic Church.

So what is the Christian Devil doing here? He is serving as a symbol of addiction, co-dependency, or anything else that our minds can be "enslaved" to. When he comes up in a reading about relationships, possible interpretations include that two people are tied together by obligations, or fear, or bills, but not love. It could mean an unhealthy dependence that they have on each other. It could just mean a very unhealthy relationship. No Christian Devil. No "evil." No "hell." None of that at all.